Sunday, December 31, 2017

What does possible mean?

Bryan Caplan and Philip Tetlock agree that experts need to use more precise language when describing probabilities. For example, "serious probability" is a term that means different things to different people, but it's thrown into discussion about important things.

Bryan's son, Tristan, offers a chart to help resolve this problem:


Another attempt to solve the problem comes from analyzing poll data:



Maybe there's a little chance to start using this language in a few more of our papers. But probably not.